Sun Burst

They left their car behind in the Pan Handle of Florida.

Broken down along the side of the road.

Tin can from a Chunky’s Chicken Corn Chowder soup barely holding

Together the rotten muffler.

Love.

Flashes like heat waves rolling up from asphalt

Pavement, as smoke eddies and drifts from a lit

Pall Mall filter Gold Light 100, grasped like a lifeline into

Another time where glorious naivety

Flexed in her 19 year old calve muscles.

Feet strong and unweary, propped on the dashboard watching the

Moss dipped trees roll along outside the window while Jethro Tull blasts from the radio.

These stories written in the power of youth and the glory of

Summers wandered through decades ago.

Her skin tattooed now with narratives and bygone memorabilia.

Literally.

She, her, I, wears her heart on her sleeve.

(Left side inside wrist wreathed with cherry blossoms)

She, her, I, has not forgotten the sunshine splash of freckles

Constellating his face and the desire badgering her heart to kiss each one.

Love rises like mist in a swimming pool at night in

Saint Augustine awash in humidity and the susurration of wind in palm leaves.

Song of flash pan memories born on the wings of cicadas,

Bark of a worried dog, crackle of fire on the edge of night,

Embers glowing on her (my) face, fronting strength under the curious

Gaze of heroin junkies and good ol’ boys with running mates and prostitute

Companions holding bent Budweiser can carburetor crack pipes.

She, her, I, will dance, never the less, none the less, dance now, dance then

Beneath the swelter of stars, amid the whispers of sexy, sexy, sexy

Spilling from the mouths of men unable to grasp her, attain her, hold her (me).

Love, lost like a plasticine slipper in the dusky playa at sunset.

Burnished with desire to kiss the bottom lip of his mouth and vanish into the

Streets of the Mission District, oh my sweet San Francisco how unexpected

Summer night strewn me with ghost kisses of fog being sucked in over Twin Peaks.

She, her, I will climb the hills back towards the sea, remember her (me) her face

Aswirl in dark curls, your face writ with awe, once again in her (my) hands.

Oh bluest eyes

Peering back into mine, this blissful fantasy a phantasmagoric feeling all

Ephemeral and moon washed will haunt you, I, me no more.

For yes, oh yes,

My darling.

This too shall pass.

Well, I tried

I really did.

I even got up before my alarm went off.

Nightmares.

Fucking had a using dream last night and in my dream I woke up, still dreaming, thinking that I had relapsed and I had to tell my person and then I was going to be new all over again.

I woke up in the grey foggy light of the Outer Sunset in August, it could have been 6 a.m. it could have been 10 a.m., although my alarm was set for 8:30 a.m. so I knew it wasn’t that late, but for a moment I really thought the dream was for real.

I tried to shake it off.

I saw it was a little after 8 a.m. and just decided to get up and get going, sleep was pretty much ruined at that point, another twenty minutes was not going to do me any good.

I got up.

I put on my swimsuit.

I made my bed.

I did my prayers, read my books, breathed.

I grabbed my swim bag and I set out for Sava Pool.

Only to be foiled.

It’s closed for maintenance!

Until September 7th.

I was a bit upset, although not horribly, part of me was very proud of myself for getting up and going and seeing the pool through the glass made me happy.

I thought for a moment of heading over to the other side of town and maybe hitting the pool on Arguello, but I had a lot to do today and a friend from school happened to text me asking if I wanted to catch up and grab coffee at Trouble.

Seeing as how I wasn’t able to swim I figured I would settle for gossip and coffee.

Although I was a bit on the fence about going to Trouble.

That’s my landlady’s hang out spot and I wasn’t really wanting to see my friend there if she was there, we have been avoiding each other, but it’s still not very comfortable here.

The loudness gets to me quite a bit.

And sure enough, she was there and I could hear her laughing from the corner of the 7-11 across the street.

I pinged my friend, asked him to come over and we just had coffee at my place.

Saved me from a five dollar cafe au lait.

I still can’t believe what some places charge for coffee, it’s like what some folks charge for rent.

Despite our coffee plans being slightly misled, it was good to catch up with my friend and see what he’s been up to and how supervision is going for him and share my plans for my private practice internship and all the things.

He has wanted to do a group with me a number of times but our schedules have just not quite coincided.

But.

Lovely to catch up and good to have a person to talk to about school as I am so close to heading into my next phase.

I did a little, actually a lot, of writing after he headed out and that felt good.

I reflected on the phone call I had with my person this morning as I was driving back from the closed pool and relating the details of my nightmare.

How my alcoholism doesn’t like it when I am having intense feelings and the using dream was a way to try to escape from the feelings.

But the feelings came anyway.

I cried a bunch today too.

It’s still early, I’ve been told, there is going to be a lot to grieve, keep letting yourself feel them.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

I know.

But fuck.

It is hard.

And I’m a psychotherapist, I know the importance of not stuffing my feelings.

I’ve been damn good about it, I think, my person certainly has made a point of reflecting to me that I have, that he’s consistently amazed by the things I am moving through and the grace with which I am doing so.

I don’t always feel graceful though.

And I burst into tears three or four times today.

So.

There is that.

Ugh.

I just miss him so much, I feel crushed by it, I bought him cards today without thinking about it.

I used to write him love notes all the time.

I made it a point to find sweet, unusual, poignant cards to give him.

I like letters.

I like writing.

I like paper and envelopes and thoughtfulness.

I bought the cards thinking that maybe, maybe one day, hopefully not too far down the line, I’ll be able to write him cards again.

Perhaps I was foolish.

Perhaps I am foolish.

But for a moment it appeased my heart to have the cards.

I want to see him.

I know I  can’t.

At least not right now.

I want to talk to him, text him, email him, send him smoke signals.

And I can’t.

I want to kiss him, hold him, be held by him, express all the love in my body and heart and soul to him.

And I can’t.

All I can do is keep feeling these things and taking the suggestions I have been given and believing that God has this relationship, and that we are both being carried and loved.

That’s about the best I can do.

That and cry.

I am just going to go and cry some more.

Damn it.

You don’t remember me, but I remember you
‘Twas not so long ago, you broke my heart in two
Tears on my pillow, pain in my heart 
Caused by you, you

If we could start anew, I wouldn’t hesitate
I’d gladly take you back, and tempt the hand of fate
Tears on my pillow, pain in my heart, caused by you

Love is not a gadget, love is not a toy
When you find the one you love 
(S)he’ll fill your heart with joy

If we could start anew, I wouldn’t hesitate
I’d gladly take you back, and tempt the hand of fate
Tears on my pillow, pain in my heart, caused by you

Swimmingly

I did not forget my swimsuit today.

Nope.

I had that puppy packed in my purse.

I go just about nowhere without my purse.

I pulled it out as soon as I walked in the door at work, “look what I didn’t forget,” I said triumphantly to my charge who was very excited to see it but still asked why I hadn’t remembered it yesterday.

I ruffled his hair, said I was sorry again for forgetting and promised I would do a lot of swimming with him to make up for it.

And I did.

I also went down the water slide to appease him.

I was not really interested, it’s meant more for kids and it was sort of awkward to climb, but he really wanted me to and I wanted to humor him and we were just having the best day, so yeah, I clambered up and went down and it was cute.

He was so happy today.

And so was I.

Although I had my moments of sadness.

Happiness too.

Swimming is happiness for me.

There is nothing quite like it.

I feel so in my body and alive and it’s just exhilarating.

The mom actually told me to take some time to myself today and I got to put in 500 yards.

That’s not much, but it felt great and I was happy to have some time to swim.

I have also set my alarm for tomorrow morning.

I will be getting up and going to Sava Pool to swim.

My swim bag is packed and I’m air drying my suit in a place that I won’t forget it.

It was also really such lovely weather, sunny, bright, not too hot, but hot enough.

And it made me think of you, bunny.

I realized that it wasn’t just the Marin hills that made me think of you, it was swimming as well.

I had the same feeling in my body, in my heart, when I went swimming in the Mediterranean when my best girl friend and I went hiking into the Calanque de Sormiou outside of Marseille.

It was the sun, it was the salt water, it was the dry hills and the green trees, very reminiscent of Marin, but also it was the feeling.

It was the feeling of being so in my body and I kept feeling that you should be there with me, that we are meant to be somewhere sunny with you sunbathing, as I know you like, tan and golden and glowing like some leonine thing in the light, and me swimming and emerging from the pool or sea to sit next to you and bask in the sunshine.

Then I realized it at a deeper level.

Swimming reminds me of you because of how at ease in my body I am in the water.

I found that same ease with you.

I have never felt so at home in my body than when I was with you, making love, or laying together, spent afterward, completely glowing and happy and alive, so alive.

I teared up at the pool when I made the connection and realized that was one more thing that was so good about being with you.

I was myself.

In the pool, in the water, I am myself.

When I was with you I was myself.

Unapologetically me.

I wanted you there by my side because I was myself and free and happy and I associate those feelings with you.

And I can’t share any of this with you.

And we never went swimming together.

Although we did bask in some sunshine.

It wasn’t enough.

I am such a good addict, just give me some more please, more of you and more of you and more of you until I am satiated.

Which I never am for very long.

Sigh.

I miss you my love.

And I am grateful to have made the connection today with what it feels like to be in the water, to be in my body and how it reminds me of you.

It will incentivize me to swim.

And one day.

I can dream.

I can.

I do hope.

I really do.

That I will get to go swimming.

I will get to share this feeling.

I will get to go.

And.

Be.

Once again.

With.

You.

Swimming Pools

And nectarines.

Vistas of blue skies, gentle mountain slopes, green trees, sunshine, Marin.

I went with the family I work for to San Rafael to the Marinwood community pool there.

The kids had swimming lessons and mom wanted to be out of the fog and in some actual summer weather.

Mission accomplished.

It is always just a touch surreal to come out of the grey blanket of fog into the bright sunshine of Marin.

It was an hour away but felt like an entirely different planet.

So much sunshine.

It was nice.

It felt good to be there, to be helpful, to be of service, to be doing a good job.

And.

Motherfucker.

It felt good to swim.

I love being in the water and every time I get in I question why am I not doing it more.

It feels marvelous.

The pool was perfect too, the temperature cool but not cold, the chlorine was well-balanced and it had the perfect saline level.

I was blissed out swimming in that water.

I have been swimming since I was a baby.

Literally.

10 months old.

I can’t remember not being able to swim.

Sometimes it baffles me when kids are afraid of the water, as one of my charges was, but she trusted me and we worked it out and I think she had some fun.

Her brother was much more into it, but they both wore flotation devices.

I keep my opinion to myself in regards to floaties, but I freaking hate them.

I feel like they, the floaties, especially water wings, create a dependence on them and it takes a child much, much, much longer to learn how to swim.

That being said.

I am not the parent in the situation and the mom wanted them in the floats and felt better about having them protected and safe.

Mom’s got the prerogative.

I however, felt free to cavort, to a point, I was with the kids in the pool, and play, and swim.

I didn’t get enough and now I am sitting here trying to think of ways to get myself back in.

And after today’s day at work, I basically have a swim bag assembled.

I have my suit, a towel, a chamois, my flip-flops, a bag of toiletries, and my goggles.

The goggles never made an appearance as I wasn’t going to do any lap swimming, although for a minute or two I thought about requesting the opportunity to do so.

It would have been nice.

So that’s twice this summer that I have gone swimming and after both times I have resolved to get myself into a more regular swimming routine.

It is good for me, easy on my crapy knees, great for all my joints, I love how I feel in the water, I feel free.

There’s something so heavenly about being under water and feeling weightless and graceful and strong.

I feel strong when I swim.

I noticed I walked differently in my suit when I came out of the locker rooms to the pool, I felt like a guard again, I walked like a guard without even really thinking about it.

I felt myself embodied.

It was really good.

And it was a nice change-up from the routine of work.

It’s a like a tiny work vacation while at work.

We’re going to be at the pool all week-long.

There’s a slim chance I might not go with them and stay at the house on Wednesday for a household delivery, which would mean that I would stay in the city with the baby, tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday, however, I will be swimming in Marin.

I am hoping I can carry the momentum forward and maybe hit Sava pool on Saturday.

I also looked at the UCSF Mission Bay pool schedule, they have late hours, I could look into getting a membership there again.

They have a great facility.

Of course, I’m just shy about committing to any certain place in the city yet, after I know where I’m going to live does it make sense to buy a membership to a place that I may regret having to do a big commute to.

So while I’m in the neighborhood I’m really going to give it my all and go to Sava Pool at least once a week.

I also think there is a pool at the hotel that the intensive for school will be held, although I doubt it’s a big pool, there maybe some opportunity to get in the water during the time I’m there.

It’s definitely worth bringing the swim suit with.

Anyway.

Swimming.

It’s on my mind.

And that’s helpful.

It helps with the sad.

It helps with my body.

It helps with my heart.

There is something sweet and nostalgic about it and also healthful and needed.

If I’m not doing yoga and I’m not bicycle commuting I really do need to incorporate something into my schedule.

I just checked the rates for the UCSF membership and it’s not too bad, $105 a month, I was paying $84/month for the yoga, it’s a little more, but then again, I enjoy swimming much more than I enjoyed yoga.

I will start small.

I will get to the pool this Saturday and I will let it begin there.

Shoot.

Having the swimsuit is more than half the battle anyway.

The rest is just showing up and jumping in.

I can do that.

I really can.

Who’s Going To Fold My Laundry?

I mean.

I got the work side of it covered.

Actually did laundry three times already this week at work.

Between swimming lessons, potty training, and boys just being boys, I have a lot of laundry to do.

But what about mine?

It’s just sitting there on the bed, looking at me like, “what you’re blogging, excuse me bitch, you have chores to do.”

My bib overalls spake the loudest.

I really should just haul ass into the shower is what I should do.

I was in the pool today with the family at UCSF Mission Bay and I can smell the chlorine on myself.

Which is actually a scent I quite enjoy.

It reminds me of swimming in high school, one of the few places I always felt safe and secure in.

I lucked into swimming.

I lucked into being on the team and I lucked for sure into lifeguarding.

That haven of chlorine and warm air was a balm to my soul, even if I did not have the words to put on it, I loved that pool, I loved the light that would come in through the windows and I loved that every once in a great while there was no one at open swim and all the guards could be found napping on plywood boxes that held kick boards and pull buoys.

I miss that.

One of the few things from high school that I miss.

Sometimes I see a post of a high school classmate on Facebook and it does make me wonder what my life would look like if I had stayed in Wisconsin.

I don’t know that I would have as many tattoos or that my hair would be multi-colored.

Of course last year when I visited my best friend and her skulk up in the Northern reaches of the state, she pointed out a number of colorful dye jobs–I was not the only one.

Dare say, however, that I was the only one in her 40s with purple and pink hair.

What would life look like if I had stayed in Wisconsin?

It is almost too much of a stretch for my mind to imagine.

I suspect I would be married and with child or children.

Career wise I have no clue.

Although, considering what I was doing when I left it would probably be in the hospitality, food service industry.

Would I be sober?

Also another thing I cannot quite imagine.

Although I believe, knowing what I know, that my disease would have progressed and found me drinking more and more.

I don’t have any doubt about that whatsoever.

I know folks who have gotten sober in Madison, in fact, someone I reached out to during a nadir or despair, but I was not quite there yet, that was to come about four months later, had told me about being sober and going to undergrad and how it was just his luck that his new good friend happened to be the floor manager at the Angelic Brewing Company.

Floor Manager.

I hated that title.

I was not the General Manager, never would be, but I always felt that Floor Manager just did not do justice to the work I put in there.  I am still amazed that I worked there for six years and did the things I did.

Although most of it is a haze of memories and the nights all blur together.

Not that I was black out drinking while I was working there, or doing drugs.

The only thing I did was an ecstasy pill one night after the bar closed in one of the last days of working there.

I was far too controlling and afraid of the repercussions of drinking and I wanted nothing to do with drugs.

I was in charge and God forbid I didn’t do the right thing.

I believe I held myself, and I still hold myself, to far higher standards than any one else was or does.

I realize, just now as I think about an ex and his wife and their two kids in Sun Prairie;  I would rather not continue thinking about what life would be like, if, when, or whatever.

The fact is life is pretty damn good now and I don’t have regrets about it.

Even the laundry sitting on my bed thinks I have done an astounding job of making it here in San Francisco.

I’ve never been forced to leave, and the only time I chose to move away was not to move back to Wisconsin, but to move to Paris.

Not Texas either.

France.

I was just thinking though, I miss my best friend and sometimes I do wonder what it would be like to live closer to her, to get to see her and her husband and the boys a little more often.

I received a voicemail from her the other day and I could hear how much she misses me and damn, don’t I miss her.

Christmas?

I know.

It’s May.

But as I gear up for the ensuing travels and then the start of graduate school I don’t know that it will be any sooner.

I, of course, much prefer Wisconsin in summer.

There’s blueberry picking, strawberry picking, running around in sundresses, warm nights (mosquitos and ticks, but who’s counting those), long walks along the water, and my friend.

Then I think, well, I do like Wisconsin in the winter too, it’s pretty, the snow, the Christmas lights, the stark trees outlined against the grey skies.

It’s a different kind of beauty and one that I know well from the many winters I spent there growing up from five to when I really left, 29.

Twenty four years of Wisconsin.

There are times when I ride through the Pan Handle on my bicycle and I will have a flash, the way the light is falling, the trees, the green of the grass, and it feels, just for a moment that I am on the North East side of Madtown, perhaps the edges of Maple Bluff, and if I was just to go left rather than right I would find myself riding my bicycle past Tenney Park instead of Golden Gate Park.

But it never does happen.

And I don’t want to go back.

There is no there there.

It is here.

Here, in San Francisco where I belong.

“I always worried about you when you said that you were going to find yourself in San Francisco,” my best friend told me.

I think she meant pulling a geographic was not going to solve the problems I was trying to solve.

She was right, I took my problems with me.

But I did find me here.

I found me in Burning Man, in the rooms, in the Mission District, on the long walks through the park, the meteor shower over Twin Peaks, I found me riding a bicycle (who the hell knew that I would be bicycling all this time? Certainly not I), I found me on the beach by the ocean, the sun wrapt in my hair on my face, the sand in my toes; I found me while being a nanny, who the hell was going to call that one?

And I’m going to fold my laundry.

Because I find me in that too.

The simple acts of self-care that I have been taught to do and enjoy.

The small things that I carry out to continue getting to live in the most amazing place in the country and continue to be the most amazing woman I can be.

It all happens right here.

In San Francisco.

Nowhere I would rather be.

Right here.

Right now.

Wet Behind the Ears

I was in the pool today for the first time in over a year.

I went to La Petite Bailene in the Presidio today with my charges and their mom and got in the pool with one of the boys for his swimming lesson.

My how things have changed.

I taught swimming lessons when I was in high school.

It was NOT La Petite Bailene.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the facility, in fact, I was sort of blown away by the entire set up of it.

They have all the bells and whistles.

And when the little guy got upset, who wouldn’t get upset, suddenly in a new place with a new teacher and a new environment that even for an adult was really stimulating, there was suddenly a lifeguard pool side calling out his name and blowing bubbles down on him like some magic pixie fairy.

God damn.

I did not grow up on swimming lessons like this.

In fact, I cannot remember not being able to swim.

I was just tossed into the water.

I was a water baby.

My mom did say her heart dropped out of her mouth when I was just dropped into the water the first time by the instructor, but then I popped back up and paddle about.

Babies have an innate floating ability until about 4-6 months.

Infants can be taught how to swim.

The phase does pass and then there’s all sorts of techniques to help teach kids how.

I was blown away by all the stuff they had.

The pool in DeForest was a great pool and it was always a refuge for me when I was there, but it did not have the bells and whistles of La Petite Bailene.

I just pretended I did not know what I was doing and let the instructor guide me through the class.

It was fun being a “novice.”

I was completely at ease, although my charge was not so much, clinging and upset, but by the end we did coax a high-five out of him and I suspect that given a few more times in the water, he will get excited to be swimming and having a blast.

I was looking over the posters in the lobby of the facility and all the classes offered and I thought, this is a fucking racket.

There is no way it should take this long to teach a kid how to swim.

No way.

But then I reflected on the nature of the classes and the availability of pool time that most of the kids get and it’s just not the same for a city kid like it was for me in high school.

We were always in the water and I was always teaching.

I think we also ran three-week sessions where the kids would come in every other day or every day and they got the bulk of the learning down.

The lessons at this facility are only offered once a week.

I don’t think most folks can swing more than that out of a busy family schedule.

It’s a lot to get to the pool.

But it was a fun distraction and a great way to pass a large chunk of the day.

I didn’t mind driving cross the town to get to the class.

It was nice to sit and be still for a minute and see the city from the seat of a car instead of the seat of my bicycle.

My legs got a work out yesterday and today and I am feeling it.

So a nice sit in a car seat as a passenger was a treat.

A treat I will get once a week for the next three months–we are signed up!

And it does make the day go by super quick.

The boys were hungry for dinner when we got back and after unloading them, feeding dinner, and doing bath time, it was all the sudden time to go.

I did not get the typical break in my day as it was Columbus Day and school was out, so I had both the boys, but I did not mind, as I said, the day passed quickly and the sitting in the car did feel like a break, it’s a luxury to sit that long when one is a nanny.

It was nice, too, to be in a pool.

I was quite tempted to dive around myself and cavort a little, but there was no opportunity for that with my charge, I think there will be once he has a little more time, but it did make me think that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go swimming once in a while for myself.

Not open ocean swimming like I have talked about, I don’t think I want to work that hard right now, but in a pool would be nice.

There’s a couple of pools in the Mission and the one at 19th between Valencia and Guerrero has lap swim.  Maybe the next time I am in the park I will check it out, see if there’s a time that makes sense for me to do some lap swimming.

Just a thought.

I have plenty going on in my life as it is.

Trying to date.

Doing the deal.

Living life.

Writing.

I forget the time commitment I have to do the writing and I do it every day, which is why I probably forget that it too eats a good portion of time.

Time that I do not resent or regret, it makes life for me better, my therapy, the pen and the paper, my outlet, the blog, my connection to something outside myself which seems to speak to me through the writing here.

I don’t necessarily have to cram in more stuff.

Unless it’s fun.

I was told tonight to do one fun thing a week.

Swimming could be construed as fun, now that I think of it.

Or going on a date.

That’s supposed to be fun right?

I’m just going to leap into the deep end and find out.

I might even make a date for this weekend.

Get my fun on.

Paddle about and try to keep my head above water.